METAIRIE, La. ― For much of the past three weeks or so, Darren Sharper found himself goaded into responding to Tweets from Minnesota’s Visanthe Shiancoe.
But as minicamp began at the Saints facility, New Orleans’ Pro Bowl free safety said he would be goaded no more.
“Nothing is going on,” Sharper said. “I’m done with that. Let that ride. Like one of my favorite rappers says, ‘Be like Lebron, be too big to respond.’ ”
Of course, that could partly be due to Head Coach Sean Payton, who called the entire Twitter war “silly.”
The Saints, you might recall, open with the Vikings at home Sept. 9.
It all started innocently enough on May 21 when Sharper tweeted that “X marks the spot” on Vikings quarterback Brett Favre, who underwent offseason ankle surgery.
To which Shiancoe, Minnesota’s standout tight end, responded that X marked the spot on Sharper, who had surgery to clean up his left knee this offseason.
From there, the trash talk escalated with each saying they’d put a game check on the line before Shiancoe put the battle into Defcon 5 by putting sharper’s jersey on a picture of Osama Bin Laden and taking target practice at it.
Sharper Tweeted, “OK homeboy, you done went too far, making me out to be something that has brought this country a lot of heartache.”
From there, the story went national.
That’s also when it came to a halt, at least on Sharper’s end. You can thank Payton for that.
“The various comments going back and forth, I just think it’s fairly silly that we are sitting in the month of June talking about two players,” Payton said. “It would be different if they were texting each other but I don’t anticipate it being any more of an issue.
“But it is something when you decide to – and I don’t have a Facebook or a Twitter or any of those other things – but when you decide to do something like that, you are having a mini press conference. We make sure the players understand that.”
Sharper said Payton spoke with him about the online exchanges with Shiancoe and in specific terms, told him to stop.
With a wry smile, Sharper added the words from Payton weren’t harsh.
Making the escalation all the more quizzical is that the two are friends, becoming so when Sharper played with Shiancoe in Minnesota two seasons ago.
But according to strong safety Roman Harper, the more questions both Shiancoe and Sharper get, the more everyone is playing into the game they want.
“Y’all are giving them exactly what they want – a little bit of media attention,” Harper said. “Sharp loves it. Obviously Visanthe loves it. I don’t’ even read Twitter that much. I think what they’re trying to accomplish is being accomplished right now.”
Still, by the end, the Tweets had a serious tinge to them. Sharper tweeted that Shiancoe should run a route over the middle, all but saying that he would try to hit the tight end hard.
When asked if his tone was serious, Sharper only said, “First game you’ll see how serious it was. We’ll see in the first game. That’s when all the actions will be shown.”
For now, that’ll have to do.
